Journalist, entrepreneur and marketing firm founder. I write about higher ed and early career issues. Pithily. I was pontificating about Millennials and Millennial culture back when they were still known as Gen Y.

Why It's Better For Your Career To Be Loathed Than Liked

The fact that Erika Napoletano’s TEDx talk on unpopularity features a slide depicting Sarah Palin engaged in some sort of sexual congress with a polar bear should tell you everything you need to know about the Colorado-based branding strategist’s – think a redheaded, tattooed Tina Fey with a special weakness for four letter words - approach to courting a loyal fan base – both as an entrepreneur and a human being. In Napoletano’s world, you’re either with her or against her and she wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I’m not concerned with being likeable as a brand or person. I’m concerned with not having to put on a meat suit every day when I stand in front of the world around me. Being honest and building the next better version of you? That’s what creates memorable people, brands and experiences. I don’t give a s*** if I’m likeable. I care the most about whether the people who allow me to do what it is I love every day respect me for who I am and know that I respect them the same way.”

The idea of hostile brands is nothing new, of course. In her book, Different: Escaping The Competitive Herd, Harvard’s Youngme Moon discusses how companies such as Red Bull and Mini-Cooper build loyalty by seemingly scorning their potential customers or daring them to buy, but there are fewer examples of successfully antagonistic personal brands. Heck, even famed shock jock Howard Stern eventually ended up courting middle American mores with a turn as a judge on America’s Got Talent. In an age where college students are routinely warned about sanitizing their online presences in order not to offend the sensitive eyes of future employers, is there room for people who just don’t give a damn about being liked and are able to make a living anyway?

Saul Colt says yes. The marketing consultant and speaker bills himself as the smartest man in the world (and the handsomest, the funniest, etc.). He once hired a mime to follow him around SXSW and a woman to accuse him of fathering her baby during the Q&A portion of one of his presentations. And audiences love him. While Colt is known for attention-getting stunts and off-color asides in his speeches, he understands that appreciation for someone’s antics quickly turns to annoyance if you can’t back up your bluster with a solid work ethic and the kind of performance clients and employers are willing to shell out for – call it the Olbermann Rule, if you will.

“I never worry about my stunts alienating people because my strategy has always been to be the best in the world at a highly desirable skill and create stuff no one has seen before with amazing results for the people I work with/for. When I am speaking at a conference, my goal is to be the best speaker of the day, even if I am the least known speaker. I accomplish this by only speaking about myself and my accomplishments. It’s those accomplishments that act as proof points when I proclaim my greatness and I do that a lot. From day one I have always carried myself in a way that may rub people the wrong way, but that works for me in two ways. It puts a target on my back so I can never get lazy and always do the best work imaginable and, two, there are a lot of people who have internet fame but you never really know why, with me I am always working to remind people why I am amazing and to be known for my work first, but also for my sense of humor, style and lovemaking ability.”

Colt knows that he isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but rather than broad-based appeal, he strives to be the first choice for companies who want to take creative marketing chances and are ready to embrace unorthodox techniques – like staging a fake PETA protest.

While both Colt and Napoletano have larger-than-life personas that lend themselves to polarization, how can the average entrepreneur or professional embrace the daunting idea of being utterly transparent about their values and attitudes and trusting that their honesty will draw clients and customers?

Begin with baby steps, recommends business consultant and author Erika Lyremark. Almost everything Lyremark knows about sales and marketing came from her time as a stripper - pole-based lessons she cataloged in the soon-to-be released Think Like A Stripper: Business Lessons to Up Your Confidence, Attract More Clients & Rule Your Market. Our tendency she says, is to stifle opinions and contentious view points in order to make sure we don’t rock the boat, which is exactly the opposite of what attracts and retains clients and customers. “The most successful people in business have a point of view. If you’re unclear, it’s hard for customers to make decisions. If you’re unclear, they’re unclear. Your customers want it to be easy.”

Lyremark encourages the entrepreneurs she works with to begin with understanding and articulating opinions about the work that they’re doing.

“There’s an exercise I have clients do where I have them claim their view points related to their industry because the more editorial, decisive and authoritative you can be in your business, the more you’re going to stand out as a leader and as someone people listen to. If you know what you stand for, you’re going to align yourself with people who also believe in what you stand for.”

Practicing having opinions and expressing them – whether in conversation, via a blog or in your marketing communications – is the fastest way to differentiate yourself from the competition and start to own your professional brand, she advises.

Embracing your individuality isn’t a concept that you can leave at the office, though. Unpopularity, according to Napoletano, extends beyond the business sphere. Brand loyalty – be it professional or personal – comes from respecting your best-fit audience and yourself. It’s not a practice so much as a lifestyle.

“I don’t think you can partition the act of embracing unpopularity off as solely a business practice. Being unpopular and enjoying the unparalleled benefits of following that path starts with people. Personalities. Company cultures. Values. Commitments. I’ve never met a company that’s told me one of their goals was to satisfy everyone, every single time and without fail. I mean, hell, we can’t even do that in our own lives! We can go to our favorite restaurant time and again and eventually, the empanada is going to be overcooked, right? Unpopular is about honoring the two most important audiences we’ll ever have: the people who will love us for everything we are – and perhaps more importantly, everything we’re not – and ourselves. How do you keep people coming back when you burn their empanada? You build an audience of people who will love you for everything you are and everything you’re not. We’re not perfect as people and we’ll never be perfect as companies. Anyone who says differently is full of it.”

Trying to please all of the people all of the time, Napoletano, Colt and Lyremark agree, is a surefire way to be forgotten about or overlooked by them. Memorability trumps likeability and engenders loyalty. As Napoletano puts it, sticking to the middle of the road when marketing yourself and your business means you’ll ultimately end up as roadkill. Or as Lyremark cheekily offers, “If you’re middle-of-the-road no one’s going to be selling their Gucci bag to work with you.”

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I’m one of those people who also believe being authentic is much more important and valuable than wearing a shell designed to people-please. In fact, Erika is one of my business role models and observing how genuine she is in her work helped me trust my intuition about this.

As abrasive as I am, as much as I rant incessantly on twitter about the nonsense I see in business, I’m genuine. And I give 100% of my passion to what I do for a living. It’s let me build a wildly successful business where I count several of the worlds largest brands as clients.

The day I threw out my last actual suit, and the day I stopped playing nice, was one of the best days of my life.

I’ve never thought that being abrasive, nasty, mean or gratuitously shocking was a sound business decision. Sure, you get a few people who want to work with you, but there are way more people who will refuse to do so. And you can salve your feelings with “they’re not someone I wanted to work with anyway” and “it wasn’t a good fit, because I wasn’t allowed to be me.” But I have never known anyone who was turned down for work because “he was just too nice. He was always polite and kind to everyone, so I hate him.”

I can’t speak for the interviewees of this article, I can only speak of my personal experience.

In my situation, the only prospective opportunities I know I have missed out on due to my sharp tongue are various prospective employers who were afraid I would harm their brand out in the world.

Amazingly in multiple cases, such prospective employers have imploded and are no longer in business, after major publish shellacking.

On the other hand, I’ve been blessed to have more business opportunities come my way every year. To the point where I routinely decline opportunities. Both from companies wanting to hire me even at times when I’ve not been wanting to even temporarily hang up my entrepreneurial shingle and consistently these days from prospective clients.

And those employers who had hired me (at those times when I chose to be a W2) and those clients who have hired me as a consultant consistently communicate how refreshing it is to work with someone so bold, so raw honest and so dedicated that they wish they had hired me sooner.

And that’s just it – while there are more companies not wanting to do business with people “like us”, that’s fine. Because us foul-mouthed raw unedited types (to whatever degree of unedited each of us is in our own way) are rare breeds, not the mainstream. We’re radical independent bad*ss a**hats and we don’t need the mainstream masses of clients or employers to be more successful than most mainstream people earn. (Yes, I brought in $175,000 last year. How’d you do?)

I’m not looking to be nice. I’m looking to be honest and bring value. And I don’t particularly think that anyone in this article (myself included) is doing anything gratuitously. I’m me. Take it, leave it. If you fall anywhere in between, I’m not doing my job. And I mean it when I say that I don’t care if people don’t want to work with me because they mistake raw honesty for not being “nice.” Pound sand and go hire “nice.” I’m here to get sh*t done — and sometimes, that isn’t about being nice. It’s about making tough decisions and having the huevos to execute on them. I’ll take respectful over nice or polite any day — and no, they’re not the same thing :)

I can’t think of anyone who was punished for being too nice…because they wern’t memorable.

See what i did there?

I am actually very nice. When I am walking with a woman on the street I always walk closest to the curb so if a horse and buggy gets loose I will get trampled first and spare my lady friend the injustice of death by horse.

But in a business situation I am focused on a goal because that is what I am being paid to do. Would I let a woman get run over while i am working? Absolutely not because I was raised well but once I am done saving her I am going right back to work.

I think the point I am trying to make is women like me and I am heroic.

When “being nice” is a euphemism for being anything but transparent and authentic, it’s a manipulative artifice contrived to establish and maintain a safe distance from being known. I’ve been “niced” nearly to death. I’ll take real over fake nice. I know and love Erika. Don’t mistake her frank, forthright nature as being intentionally hurtful or willfully malicious. She’s neither. Erika represents the best of what real brand experts bring to the table. So if you don’t want real, and you want to contrive a fake brand identity, stfu, as the kids say. And good luck with that.

This is another nail in the coffin for civility, and it’s the last thing we need. While being loathed may work for a small minority, this theory is VERY misleading, unpredictable, extraordinarily risky, and will fail for most before they can get off the ground. If one has to rely on their strikingly arrogant personality to make an impression, they likely lack in more important assets like skill, personal style, or results – assets people really need and desire. All the gross income claims and personal net worth in the world isn’t going to convince me that being loathed is key to success. I prefer leaders who succeed by helping others – not just with their services – but with GENUINE kindness and good attitudes delivered in their product.

As for saying whatever and whenever you want for the sake of being genuine? Wise leaders have always noted the value of a held tongue, and the appropriateness of context.

For most, making those around them happy with positivity and good client relations will far outdo the theory of being loathed. But the best thing about being kind and gracious to people, both in business and personal? You’re helping to make an increasingly toxic world a little better.

You make some very excellent points – it’s not so simple to just act like an a**hole and think you’re going to succeed.

The ability to be highly respectful, courteous and “civil” at those times when it’s necessary in building trust especially, is critical.

As Erika has so well executed in her path, and I and others have continually strived to in our own over the decades, bringing the highest level of skill, knowing that none of has “all the answers”, and being extremely cooperative through quality of service are absolutely all part of the formula.

On the flip side of that, the overwhelming majority of people who live purely in a “civility” mindset also lack the capability to break through the day to day internal corporate barriers, politics, and conflicts that hinder organizations from either making the tough decisions or making the bold choices necessary for bigger success.

And sadly, all too many out there disguise their arrogance by labeling themselves as the rebel with fresh ideas, yet completely fall flat on their faces when it comes to delivering real results that would otherwise set them apart.

For those of us who are so raw as to offend sensibilities, we are who we are. People pleasing as an end goal is deadly.

Most of my clients know I’m a recovering addict, know that I don’t dance around the issues for the sake of civility when I need to communicate the urgency, the seriousness of various issues, and know full well that for all the perceived arrogance, I also bring with me a list of references going back many years where that attitude helped wake them up and gave them the infusion to get off their asses in a new and better way.

So whether someone prefers civility at all times or not, the real issue is what value of service, what true depth of skill and experience can anyone bring to the table? From there, its individual preferences.

Thanks for your reply, Alan. I can agree that being fake to appease others is a mistake and a stumbling block in success. I just don’t feel “telling it how it is” needs to be rude or inappropriate as many would have it. I may have misinterpreted just what the author deems appropriate, but being loathed sounds like the “do whatever, say whatever is on your mind” to get the job done, which is dangerous in many respects. It’s often a deal breaker for prospects and contracts that could make very good partnerships. It also burns a lot of unnecessary bridges. But yes, there’s definitely a time for dignified frankness.

The title is a bit tongue-in-cheek. Being universally hated isn’t a good strategy for success in any realm. The common thread in the approach that the interviewees take in running their businesses is not censoring who they are as a means of broadening (or attempting to broaden) their appeal to a larger base of customers. They’re confident enough in their work and in the existence of a market for their frankness that they choose to focus on pleasing only a highly-engaged, enthusiastic niche audience vs. trying to be all things to all people.